Saturday, 2 May 2009

Tory Funders - The Party Of Big Money

Whilst the Tory party under Cameron the Fop minces about at Gay Pride marches it is still being funded by the same big money and aristocrats that have always run the party.

This is the party that will be voted into power at the next election, not because of that they stand for, but simply because people are sick of New Labour.

New Labour were voted in last timebecause people were still sick of the Tories.

And before that the tories were voted in as people were sick of Labour.

Get the picture yet ?

This is not a democracy - this is a pitiful joke.

Until the media are brought under control and forced to stop acting as propagandists for their own puppet political parties then this pathetic farce of incompetents on a merry go round of incompetence will continue and the country will be slowly destroyed as each political party runs the country for the benefits of their financial backers and not the people.

Call this a democracy - this is not even a joke.




http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6202032.ece


From shopkeepers to old money: how elite continues to finance Tories

Lisbet Rausing gave the Tories £50,000, although she has lived in England for only a decade

Chris Smyth and Helen Nugent

The shopkeeper Like David Cameron, the retail executive Simon Wolfson was elevated to the top job while still in his 30s. Mr Wolfson was 33 when he became chief executive of Next in 2001. The appointment was controversial, not just because of Mr Wolfson’s age, but also because his father, Lord Wolfson, had only recently stepped down as chairman.

Since Mr Cameron became leader, Mr Wolfson has given more than £200,000 to the Conservatives and seems to share many of his attitudes. He is strongly anti-Europe, and co-wrote a report with John Redwood suggesting opting out from EU employment legislation.

A Cambridge law graduate, he has won plaudits for his sure handling of Next. After an attempt to modernise its look, Mr Wolfson said recently that he aimed to tough out the recession by “sticking to the knitting”. He has however, refused to cut prices, and wrote recently in The Times that “the worst is probably over”.

The philanthropist Lisbet Rausing has long been one of Britain’s most generous philanthropists — her Arcadia Fund has given away about £120 million since 2001 — so the Conservatives must have been delighted when she added the party to her list of causes last year, with a donation of £50,000. Dr Rausing is the daughter of Hans Rausing, the Swedish industrialist who made billions from the packaging firm Tetra Pak. He has given hundreds of thousands to the Tories.


His daughter has lived in England for only a decade. She grew up in Sweden, from where her father moved to escape the country’s high taxes. She studied in the US, first at Berkeley, then getting her PhD at Harvard, where she lectured for eight years. A publishing historian, she is a fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Historical Society.

Dr Rausing has shown particular support to environmental and wildlife groups, as well as cultural and scholarly causes. In 2002 she gave £20 million to a University of London project to preserve endangered languages.

Married to an American history professor, she has homes in London, Sussex and on a 48,000-acre estate in the Highlands, on which she has built a £20 million glass-and-granite mansion.

The hedge-fund manager Lewis Chester, one of Britain’s richest hedge-fund managers, gave £50,000 to the party in both 2006 and 2007. A corporate lawyer by trade, he moved into investment after an MBA from Harvard. He rose from working in his father’s accountancy practice in Harrow, northwest London, to controlling a fund belonging to some of the country’s wealthiest citizens.

A friend and Oxford contemporary of David Cameron, in the 1990s he held directorships in companies in activities including financial intermediation, property, pharmaceuticals and packaging — all registered at his father’s office. Pentagon Capital Management was founded in 1998 with Mr Chester as chief executive and his father as chairman. Last year Mr Chester promised to fight allegations in the US that he aided frauds against millions of mutual fund investors. Lawyers for Pentagon said the allegations were unfounded.

The billionaire tactician To describe Lord Ashcroft as deputy chairman of the partydoes not do justice to the scale of his influence. Not only has he given it millions, but he has been architect of its marginal-seat strategy. This has seen the party pour resources, much provided by his company, Bearwood Corporate Services, into Labour and some Liberal Democrat seats.

Labour MPs are resentful of Lord Ashcroft’s influence, pointing to his previous residence in Belize. When he was made a peer in 2000 he promised to take up residence in Britain but has refused to confirm his tax status.

Lord Ashcroft has been credited with helping to rescue the party’s finances, once stepping in to guarantee its overdraft when it was said to be £3 million in the red.

He made his first million at the age of 31 and then built up his ADT cleaning and security business, which was taken over in 1997. He sold his stake in stages for about £500 million.

The Junior Bagman Stanley Fink, left, the hedge-fund manager and philanthropist, was made co-treasurer of the party in January. Mr Fink, who has a fortune estimated at £116 million, stood down as head of Man Group, one of the world’s biggest hedge funds, last May. He then founded a smaller firm, Isam, and expanded his charity work. In one year alone, 2006, he gave £35 million to charitable causes.

A brush with death four years ago in the form of a brain tumour prompted an increase in the philanthropic endeavours of Mr Fink, a former Manchester Grammar School pupil including funding for a children’s hospital.

The old money Few names are more redolent of dynastic wealth than Rothschild, and Serena Rothschild, wife of the 4th Baron, handed more than £190,000 of that money to the the party 2007. Lady Rothschild, daughter of a baronet and granddaughter of an earl, is a model member of the landed aristocracy. She has a keen interest in racing, and has had success as an owner. Her husband, whom she married in 1961, has followed the family traditions of banking and philanthropy, and was chairman of the National Gallery trustees in the late 1980s. The couple live at Waddesdon in Buckinghamshire, and have homes in London and Corfu. This last dragged the family name into the fray last summer, when Lady Rothschild’s son Nathaniel wrote to The Times suggesting that George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, had tried to solicit money from the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska while on holiday on the island.

The Tories vigorously denied this as they did claims that £190,000 given by Lady Rothschild had been given at the request of her son










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